Page 88 of Pucking Daddy

Play diagrams, positioning notes, the technical language of hockey strategy.

I stare at them while my brain tries to process anything beyond the image of Zara descending a staircase.

"The gala tonight," Nate says quietly, pitching his voice beneath the ambient noise. "You ready?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah, actually. Because if you walk in there looking like you're facing a firing squad, every photographer in the place is gonna catch it."

He taps the clipboard. "Same principle as game face. Whatever's going on in your head, you bury it. Present the image you need them to see."

Sound advice. The same advice I’ve given players a hundred times.

"When'd you get so smart?"

"Born this way. You just never listen." Nate claps my shoulder. "Take five. Get your head right. I'll run them through the next sequence."

I do not argue.

Just hand back the clipboard and walk toward the tunnel, needing a moment away from the ice.

The locker room is empty, thank God. I sit on the bench, elbows on knees, staring at nothing while I try to sort through the chaos in my skull.

The custody hearing has been moved up. Rachel's lawyers are circling, smelling blood in the water after the scandal hit.

Every move I make is being scrutinized, analyzed, weaponized against my right to raise my own daughter.

And then there is Zara.

I close my eyes, letting myself remember.

Her back arched against that storage room wall.

The sounds she made when I touched her.

The way she looked at me afterward—not with regret, not with expectation, just a kind of stunned honesty that mirrors what I am feeling.

That first night, before I knew who she was, I let myself want something without calculating the consequences.

Now every moment with her comes loaded with implications.

The marriage is supposed to be strategy. Clean, simple, mutually beneficial.

Instead, I find myself watching her when she is not looking, cataloging small details—the way she tucks her hair behind her ear, the specific rhythm of her laugh when Lily says something ridiculous, the softness in her voice.

This is not the plan.

My phone buzzes. I pull it out, expecting Nate or Simone.

But it’s from my ex-wife.

Rachel:

I’ve got people looking into this. If you’re hiding something, they’ll find it.

Another message comes in from an unknown number.

We should talk about your new arrangement. I have questions. - Elena Vance, Sports Illustrated